22+ Expense Report Format Templates

Nowadays, keeping track of all your spending is a very important job, both for businesses and people. After all, if you have no idea where all your money is going, it should be impossible to plan ahead. For that reason, we have tools like report templates to help make sense of all that data.

You might have experience of your expenses getting out of control, or at least on occasion, it may be that it is difficult to keep track of all your spending. Naturally, expense report templates would be perfect for helping you keep track of it all, which would be just what you need to help you control your spending.

Travel Expense Report Example

Domestic Travel Expense Report

What Are Expense Reports?

An expense report is, put simply, a report detailing all your expenses. So if you wondered why you need travel expense report templates to account for all your spending on company trips, this might explain why. Specifically, what these reports can do for you includes:

An expense report can inform you of all your expenses and spending over a particular period of time.

One of the first things you need to do when arranging your expenses is to find out where the money is going.

Software versions of such tools are available, which can spare you from having to write all your data on paper, where you could get lost among all the numbers.

Nowadays, software versions could give you all kinds of extra tools like calculators and filters to make computing your data much easier.

But if you still wanted to make printouts, then these templates could help you by giving you simple, convenient tools for the job.

Who Can Use Expense Report Templates?

You might think that businesses would have a particular need for these kinds of tools, as evidenced by examples like employee expense report templates. While you would be correct, that is not to say that only businesses can use expense report templates. After all, practically anyone looking to keep watch over their spending can find a use for these templates, including:

Private individuals can definitely make use of these templates, if they were particularly looking for ways to keep their spending down. After all, it is much easier to make plans if all your information is written down.

Travelers can also make use of these forms, so as to better plan out their travels. Expense report templates would be a perfect tool for anyone operating on a strict budget, which travelers likely are.

As a more dramatic example, investigators can use these kinds of reports if they were investigating any kind of inexplicable drain of money. They would definitely have a need for these tools to help put all the pieces together in the course of an investigation.

Business Expense Reports

Small Business Expense Report

Monthly Business Expense Report

Why Do You Need an Expense Report Template?

You might ask the question as to what you would need these kinds of templates for, specifically. On the assumption that you are a private individual, there are still several reasons why acquiring and using tools like expense report samples would be a wise idea, such as:

With an expense report template, you can more easily strategize your budget. Once you have a report detailing your expenses, you can compare that vis-a-vis your income to determine a margin for spending.

You can also use these templates to get a much wider idea of how much you spend at a time. Once you know this, you can find out where most of your income goes, and cut down on any unnecessary expenses.

You can also indirectly use your expense reports to see if you spend too much on necessities. Since you cannot do without those, your own report could point you in the direction of cheaper alternatives so as to maximize your income.

What Can You Find in an Expense Report?

Like other kinds of reports, there are certain elements that you can generally expect to find in your expense report templates. You could make the argument that templates like expense receipt templates need precisely those elements in order to convey all the data you need to know. In any case, some of what you can expect to find include:

One important element, perhaps above even the total amount you spend, is the time period. After all, you are tracking your expenses over a given time period, so it makes sense to determine what that period is so that you can contextualize your calculations.

Your expense report will also need specific categories for each item that you are spending money on. This helps to break down your expenses as a whole into something more easily understood. Now you should be able to account for each and every expense.

You would also need space for your total. Having a space to tally all your expenses makes it possible to give yourself an idea of how much you spend in total.

You may also wish to include your income on the chart, so that you can compare that to how much you spend, and make your plans as early as possible.

Event Planning Expense Report

Sample Event Expense Report

Tips to Help You Use Your Expense Report Formats

You may also wish to keep some simple guidelines in mind to help you manage how you use your expense report formats. After all, you would still have to watch how you use your tools like Excel expense templates and expense sheet templates so that they can serve you best. Some of those tips include:

Keep your reports as simple as possible so they are easier to understand. It would be best to make sure that your reports were made simple and uncomplicated so that you could focus more on what the data can tell you rather than on the data itself.

Always make sure to double-check your data. Considering that you have so much data, you should make sure that all of it is as accurate as possible. After all, if the data is incorrect, then so are all your conclusions.

In order to make the best use of these templates, you may want to make use of other tools, such as calculators. This way, you could easily tally your results and in less time. This may also go some way to avoiding human error so that you can avoid inaccuracies.

You may also want to find alternate ways of expressing your data, such as in the form of percentages. This might make it possible to find new conclusions, as your data can be placed in the context of other information.

As a side note, you may also want to make use of other templates available on this site. While everything on this page may be able to serve you in one, it may be that those other templates can provide you with more tools, particularly if you need to use them in conjunction with these templates.